Infinity: Defiance sneak preview

Well, I call it a sneak preview. No doubt as the embargo date hits this blog, other blogs, and hundreds of other YouTube channels will hit the internet at the same time.

So, what it it? Well, Infinity Defiance is the new Kickstarter from Corvus Belli. It is a co-operative dungeon-crawl game set in a space ship. By co-operative it means the players all work together to defeat the enemy, who is ran by a set of rules and cards, trying it’s very best to kill you.

So, let’s look at the game.

Lord of the rings box set for scale

What was that? You want to look inside the box? Oh go on then. First of all this is a prototype, and so is not the version that you will receive in the kickstarter – but the preview here does show how the game plays, and what the components are like.

Open wide…and breathe in that delicious new box smell.

Yummy.

As I have gone on far too long already without saying much, and I believe the best way to show gameplay is probably with a video that is no doubt on the internet already, I am going to focus on the components of the game.

First of all, the character models. Be aware that the preview models aren’t painted, and so some of the detail might be hard to see.

The quality of metal miniatures that Corvus Belli pumps out is second-to-none. The detail is insane, and they are crisp. My models had no mould lines or flash that I could see, but then again they arrived in the prototype box pre-assembled, so I am not sure how they will be at retail.

They will paint up very well, and due to the detailed armour will look lovely with either a quick contrast paint job, or a slower, more detailed effort.

Each character has their own card, and a number of sockets that can hold weapons, armour and equipment.

Here we see Uma after a couple of missions. She started with the equipment attached to her card. Her special ammunition was found in an equipment chest when she was on a mission, and her Dual Weapons skill was learnt after a few hard-fought missions killing Shasvastii scum.

The campaign is broken down into 12 missions, which tell an ongoing narrative. There are secondary objectives which can yield your party of heroes greater rewards if they manage to do them. Some of them involve hacking consoles in a certain order to ensure that high value targets aren’t shot in cold blood, or escorting allies from dangerous areas.

The first mission involved our intrepid party trying to get to an escape pod, whilst having to hack a console to free Valkyrie at the same time.

If you squint you can see Valkyrie behind the jail cell door to the right. Hacking terminal 1 opens the door, but also alerts more aliens to your presence.

Throughout the mission the more damage and general trouble you cause the more aggro you gain, which in turn results in more aliens spawning, and so on. You are in a race against time, as not before long, you have to meet this chap…

The Gwailos is much more powerful than your regular aliens. His HMG is not be trifled with, and he has three times more health than the average trooper. Fortunately, you haven’t got to kill him, just get to the launch bay as fast as you can!

To the side of the Gwailos we see his AI card. Each turn each monster type is dealt one of these cards. In this case, he uses the blue side – if more aliens are alerted later on he flips over to his red side – and then you had better run away.

The symbols are followed like a code, from top to bottom, until 2 lines are resolved. So, if he resolves the top two lines, he will move to engage the nearest target, and shoot them. If he can already shoot a target from where he is, he doesn’t need to move. This means you skip the top line, and shoot, then (potentially) move, and maybe even shoot again. Bad news for the party!

I only got a quick game of the first mission, but am keen to see how the game develops from here. It is now live on Kickstarter, so let’s see how the game grows from here!